by Jackson Lear
That, ladies and gentlemen, is the basic human test.
I just asked Ediz, Cristina, and Rachel. They all agree. Cristina says she’s allergic to cats, but that’s fine. Do zombies have allergies? We should find out. We can surround ourselves with cats and blind the zombies with fits of sneezing.
It’s getting too dark to write.
Part 5.
We have power! We have electricity! Oh, the joy of having lights again! The whole neighbourhood cheered all at once. Jeez, it’s been four days since we’ve actually had electricity, now what do we do?
We’re all charging our phones, laptops, tablets, cameras, everything that’s portable. Marcos, Ángel, and Jorge are all trying to get online. The connection is slow, probably because four million people all tried to get online at the same time. We’re all waiting as the servers get back up to speed. There’s nothing much to do but sit and talk.
I need to check the British embassy site. I need to see a message saying, ‘Flights will resume in the morning at our expense.’ I could be back in London by this time tomorrow.
Marcos just brought his laptop down to the kitchen. The main news page won’t load. Maybe they don’t have power either. Marcos just tried calling his folks in the south and the phone rang off the hook. No one answered. We’ve tried a few other news sites and nothing’s loading.
The Moroccan girl, I still don’t know her name, keeps bugging Marcos to use his laptop to check her emails and to make sure her family knows that she’s alive. Marcos keeps telling her to wait, he wants to check his stuff first. She actually said, “But it’s important!” (in Spanish, but I understood ‘es muy importante’ clear enough) and then I saw Marcos’s reaction. He rapid-fired her with Spanish but the point was crystal clear, even to me: you’re a guest, a stranger, shut up and wait your turn. She thankfully left us in peace. We can still hear her crying, though.
Rachel is trying to call her folks but she’s not getting through. Maybe they don’t have power either and their phones have died.
You know what’s weird? No one has a radio here. It seems to be out of style and out of fashion. We need a classic AM/FM radio. There are thirteen people in this house and no one has one. I guess most of us don’t actually live here, and students may not need a radio when they have all of their music on the computer.
Hang on, Marcos has found a phone number giving everyone updates. He’s calling and listening. It’s automated and on a loop. We’re all writing down the number in case we need it later.
It gives the date. 31 July. That’s today, I think. Stay indoors. Curfew. Shops may be opened from 9am until 3pm. There may be rolling blackouts. If anyone sees anything strange or unusual (we know what that means), call this number.
Marcos is calling the number. I like that. Most people would leave it to someone else to deal with but he’s on the ball. Too bad I need a translator to know what he’s saying. He seems like a good guy. Maybe a little overwhelmed, but having ten extra people in your house can do that to you. I wonder if A2 is going to be stuck here for the night.
Nope, he’s leaving, now that there’s power. He’s saying goodbye and about to hurry home. It’s dark but there’s enough light in the street to see where he’s going. Apparently he’s just a two minute walk away.
Marcos is thorough, registering the details of the single zombie, what we saw, where we saw it. I gave him the time and the street. Lucky I had the diary with me. Rachel is looking through her camera to see if there is anything useful in there to show Marcos.
Jorge is back. He has his laptop. Emails from friends all over Europe, even some from London. Curfew’s and quarantines in London, Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, Prague … just about everywhere. All military personnel have been summoned, all police are on duty, all emergency services are active.
Ángel is back. He has a friend who’s a nurse in Madrid. She said that four ‘unusuals’ have been brought in since this all started. Four in one hospital. It’s not exactly an epidemic, is it? I mean, it depends on the number of hospitals, really. If there are twenty in the city then there could be eighty zombies brought in. If there are a hundred hospitals then … all right, we start to get to some big numbers there, but four million people were miserable for days because of an average of four zombies per hospital.
Then again, that’s just one country. There could be five thousand people infected across Europe.
The Moroccan girl came back. She was shouting something. Marcos asked Azeem to take her away and keep her quiet. He’s checking the embassies. Bajaras airport is still down. They don’t know when flights will resume.
The Atocha tragedy has been reported. Seven people died. The authorities have already put a spin on it. Apparently we rioted and tore the place apart. Police are looking for us. Lovely. Did they quell our panic? No. Did they provide us with food, water, and decent bathrooms? No. Did they keep us informed about what was going on? No. They just pushed us all together like grains of rice in a pressure cooker and then wondered why people decided to leave. That still pisses me off. Treating us all like criminals. This is Europe, not a Third World dictatorship carting undesirables off to camps. It’s the -
All right, so I almost wrote ‘It’s the zombies who should be carted off to camps.’ And maybe they should be. They’re a disease and we don’t know anything about them -
Look, I know I’m tired, exhausted and suffering from a rare case of racism. But they’re not even human -
Just earlier we were talking about if these things are human or not. The little-kitty test, the kind of thing that would melt the heart of a hardened war criminal.
But anyway, if these things can be picked up and the quarantine is lifted then the rest of us can go back to our normal lives. I’ll go back to London, go back to work, see Basil again and give him a big squeeze. It’s not like he’s known what’s going on. He’s probably just pissed off that Clint won’t let him leave the house.
Clint better not have let him leave the house, not when there’s a pet curfew in place.
Should we let the zombies die? What if the doctors say that the zombies were already dead when they arrived at the hospital? They failed the existing test, after all. But what if some doctor in Japan is able to bring one of the zombies back to life and cure it? Then through negligence the doctors allowed thousands of people to die. Would they be tried for malpractice for wilfully ignoring the hippocratic oath? There would be hearings and investigations. Did the doctors do enough? Obviously they didn’t because this virus epidemic thing is spreading and the doctors haven’t contained it yet. It might now be too big to control.
So, if these things don’t die under hospital care and go on to live for another ten or twenty years, what should we do with them? Is there anyone who will want to live or work near a zombie? Will we re-classify them as another specie? Something like what we did to the AIDS people in the ‘80s where they are ostracised and given a social death sentence? Oh my God you’re a zombie, I won’t have anything to do with you. That kind of thing. We’re humans, of course we’ll do that. We’re not as compassionate as we think we are. We might be compassionate about what directly affects us, but no one gives a fuck about someone we don’t know.
A drunk driver kills a family. Kill the asshole! The drunk driver is your best friend? Go easy on him, he made a mistake. Send him to prison, yes, but he’s a really good guy.
The world is too full of double standards. And fuck no I don’t want a zombie anywhere near me. This is the time when we need the gung-ho American shoot-first approach, just as long as they don’t do to me what they did at the end of Night of the Living Dead. That was one depressing movie.
And, from what I remember of the Resident Evil films: you may need to stretch and warm up before you kung-fu your way through a zombie horde. Only good looking people will survive. They will also be ridiculously athletic. Don’t drive a Humvee if there is a gas shortage. Best to get a hybrid.
There’s a message from Katy. She says she’s
okay and is staying with Nadia. She doesn’t want to say where she is, though. I responded and told her the four of us are okay as well. I wonder how private our private messages actually are. All someone high up has to do is type in ‘Atocha’, see everyone who was there, and follow them to their current location after escaping. Katy sent back a big thumbs up. No word yet on the others.
This has to be the most recorded event in history. Everyone has a camera on them, everyone will post it online, and every government will immediately try to bring it down to quell fears of an apocalypse.
1 August
I crashed before. It’s something like 2:30am now. None of the clocks have been re-set since the power came back on. I went to bedroom number 2 alone, thought I would just rest my eyes, and woke up when I heard a murmur from next to me. Cristina. She and Rachel are asleep on the mattress. I guess Cristina couldn’t handle any more of the Moroccan girl’s bullshit. I went to sleep with the light on and it was off when I woke up, which is a little disorientating. I got out of bed quietly, grabbed my tablet, and came down to the kitchen to see if anyone was awake.
Ángel and Marcos are here with Ediz. There are websites dedicated to confirmed sightings. I guess the apps were a good idea. Too bad the apps were hacked by very smart people to render them ineffective.
These sites are a little different. You have to type in your postcode and it will show you only the surrounding area, and not, you know, the entire world. I came down to find the government here have now established a Spanish firewall. Only Spain-related news and sites can be accessed. Ángel and Marcos said that Spain isn’t the only country to do this. Greece apparently never lost their electricity but the firewall went up almost immediately. They didn’t want the spread of fake news, they only wanted the truth to get out to the people, and for that it had to be confirmed by an official. By then the news was so old that it was no longer valid.
There has been just one sighting in Getafe. One! And we saw it. All of this craziness for one stupid little zombie. Ángel and Marcos have been calling people all night, trying to get updates from them and going through the websites getting as much info as possible. Before the great firewall was erected they recorded the list of sightings. This is how it looked:
Spain – 37
Austria – 12
Belgium – 3
Croatia – 2
Czech – 8
Denmark – 5
Finland – 1
France – 24
Germany – 41
Greece – 16
Ireland – 2
Italy – 19
Lithuania – 1
Malta – none reported.
Netherlands – 11
Norway – 4
Poland – 3
Portugal – 12
Russia – 28
Sweden – 5
Switzerland – 8
Turkey – 23
UK – 58
I haven’t added it up, but holy shit, UK is doing worse than all of the other countries? How? Spain has the second highest reported, yet it was one of the last to be hit by the invasion.
So what happened to all of the reported cases from last week? Weren’t there supposed to be 20,000 zombies roaming the earth? At what point will the media admit to making shit up? So far, no one has apologised for coming up with the 20,000 number, they just keep editing their information as they go along. All they needed was something more explosive that CNN or the BBC so they could live in the ratings wonderland.
You know what’s missing? Every country outside of Europe. Not all European countries were reported. Some I guess were too small, some may not have had any sightings of zombies. I don’t know the details, I’m just writing them down. I’m curious to see how many there would be in the US. I don’t think we will get any details out of China for a long, long time.
Marcos has been working on a list based on emails and phone calls. Everyone is trying to find out when and where Zombie Zero started. The problem is, no one knew what they were dealing with when it first became apparent.
I was in a lot of those countries when it exploded. It feels like I brought this curse or disease with me. I didn’t, and I’m not telling these two where I was or what I was doing. I was in Czech and that’s now diseased. I was in Germany and that too is diseased. The Netherlands, France, and Spain, all diseased.
One thing that keeps popping up is a 19 year old Austrian girl. She was backpacking with friends in Egypt when she fell sick. She didn’t trust the medical facilities there and waited until she could go back to Austria. Well, she boarded the plane and instantly became worse. They made an emergency landing. She was taken off in a stretcher suffering heart problems and was close to death. That happened on the 3rd July. The Austrian government has been trying to track down the other passengers.
It might be that she had the flu, it might be that the virus started in Egypt. There’s no way to find out from the kitchen in Getafe.
Part 2.
Ediz is on the roof with me, in the other hammock. He knows I had a tantrum the other day and hasn’t treated me any less, not like some of the others who are still wary of me. He told me he should have gone back home already. His Spanish course is over now. I guess Rachel’s should be ending soon as well, but that has been cancelled. I told him there were twenty three zombie sightings in Turkey and he nodded, saying that his town is on the other side of the country so there isn’t much need to worry. Apparently his mum will scare the zombies twice to death and they won’t go anywhere near her.
There are still a few people at windows, on balconies and roofs, talking and looking around, too tired to sleep. I wish I could sleep. This heat is nuts. At least up here there’s a breeze, not like down in the stuffy bedroom next to two girls and one tiny window. I just hope the zombie hasn’t figured out how to climb walls.
Part 3.
There’s another zombie in Getafe. A woman. She’s of African descent. Not internal Africa where everyone is black, and not outer Africa where everyone is brown, but a shade or two lighter. She’s completely naked. Barefoot, slashes marks all over her body, oozing puss, cuts, bites, slumping around … she looks like she was gang raped by zombies and left for dead.
She’s standing in the playground in front of our building, about five metres away from me, staring at the swings, unmoving. I can’t tell if there’s a demon raging in her or if she’s absent of all self awareness.
One of the Spanish guys is shouting at her from his balcony. She’s doing nothing but staring at the swings. She looks like she’s waiting in line for Confession. The guy is still shouting at her. I bet he starts throwing… yeah, he threw something, a pebble from a pot plant or the like. It clanged on the metal struts of the swing frame. The zombie didn’t even flinch. That’s pissing the guy off even more, being ignored like that when he’s trying to be intimidating. Other people are shouting at him, probably telling him to be quiet.
Ediz just went downstairs to get Marcos, Ángel, and anyone else who is awake.
They’re up now. Marcos is on the phone. “Si, esta aqui,” he says, over and over. The guy on the balcony is throwing more stuff and still shouting. Everyone is shouting at him to shut up. He’s now shouting at the other people. I have no idea what everyone is actually saying but if there wasn’t a dead lady five metres away from my building I would probably find this quite amusing, except that there is a naked dead lady who’s staring at the swings and it’s making my skin crawl.
Fucking hell, someone went onto the street! Not the shouting throwing guy, someone else. He’s just standing against his front door looking at the zombie, passively provoking it. He’s looking around to see if anyone has seen him. Yeah, I see you, dumbass. People sound like they’re telling him to go inside. He’s walking towards the zombie. What kind of idiot does that? I bet he has a, ‘no one tells me what to do’ attitude. Maybe all he wants to do is shout, “The power of Christ compels you!” That might earn him a laugh from the neighbours, then he can
go inside and leave the thing that’s about to kill him alone.
There’s a small fence surrounding the playground. The guy has stopped just a metre away from it. His front door is still open. I think someone is there holding it open for him. He’ll need it as well, because if that door swings shut he’ll have to fumble with his keys while fighting off a zombie.
He’s trying to talk to it. People are shouting at him, pointing and being unusually expressive with their gestures. You don’t see gestures like this in England. He’s waving to the zombie, trying to get her attention.
She’s still just staring at the swing.
He’s walking around the fence, keeping his attention on her, trying to get her to look at him.
Marcos is shouting on the phone now, talking about the policía.
People are on the street now, holding onto their front doors, waving to the man to get him to go back inside.
The walking man just snorted and spat on the zombie! She could be contagious with an actual airborne virus and he’s being nothing but a fucktard! She’s still not moving. The guy just kicked the fence with a resounding boom.
Rachel and Cristina are upstairs now. The whole house is awake, listening to the shouts. The guy is kicking the fence again. The zombie hasn’t moved. Stupid douchebag behaviour, trying to be braver than the others by doing something obviously suicidal.
“You were so brave when you faced that naked woman who wasn’t moving.”
“Yes, yes I was. Want to hear my story again?”
Ha! The guy just froze. The zombie lifted her head and looked at him. He stopped moving completely. People are laughing at him now. He looks like he’s now telling the zombie to clear off. I’m sure that will work. I mean, she’s been listening and obeying everyone else for the last five minutes.
